Files Vanished, Young Chinese Lose the Future

[R.A. Hettinga]

Apparently, in China, your "Permanent Record" is still worth
something. At auction.

Of course, the open running sore that is hypercentralized
credentialism is nothing new in China.

Cheers,
RAH
"Behave, young man, or it'll go on your Permanent Record!"
--------

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/world/asia/27china.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pa
gewanted=print
 >

The New York Times

July 27, 2009

Files Vanished, Young Chinese Lose the Future
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

WUBU, China  For much of his education, Xue Longlong was silently
accompanied from grade to grade, school to school, by a sealed Manila
envelope stamped top secret. Stuffed inside were grades, test results,
evaluations by fellow students and teachers, his Communist Party
application and  most important for his job prospects  proof of his
2006 college degree.

Everyone in China who has been to high school has such a file. The
files are irreplaceable histories of achievement and failure, the
starting point for potential employers, government officials and
others judging an individuals worth. Often keys to the future, they
are locked tight in government, school or workplace cabinets to
eliminate any chance they might vanish.

But two years ago, Mr. Xues file did vanish. So did the files of at
least 10 others, all 2006 college graduates with exemplary records,
all from poor families living near this gritty north-central town on
the wide banks of the Yellow River.

With the Manila folders went their futures, they say.

Local officials said the files were lost when state workers moved them
from the first to the second floor of a government building. But the
graduates say they believe officials stole the files and sold them to
underachievers seeking new identities and better job prospects  a
claim bolstered by a string of similar cases across China.

Today, Mr. Xue, who had hoped to work at a state-owned oil company,
sells real estate door to door, a step up from past jobs passing out
leaflets and serving drinks at an Internet cafe. Wang Yong, who
aspired to be a teacher or a bank officer, works odd jobs. Wang
Jindong, who had a shot at a job at a state chemical firm, is a
construction day laborer, earning less than $10 a day.

If you dont have it, just forget it! Wang Jindong, now 27, said of
his file. No matter how capable you are, they will not hire you.
Their first reaction is that you are a crook.

Perhaps no group here is more vilified and mistrusted than Chinas
local officials, who shoulder much of the blame for corruption within
the Communist Party. The party constantly vows to rein them in; in
October, President Hu Jintao said a clean party was a matter of life
and death.

Critics contend that Chinas one-party system breeds graft that only
democratic reforms can check. But Chinas leaders say the solution is
not grass-roots checks on power, but smarter oversight and crime-
fighting.

Public policy specialists say China is shifting its emphasis from
headline-grabbing corruption cases to more systematic ways to hold
officials accountable. The government opened an anticorruption hot
line last month to encourage whistle-blowers. A few localities require
that officials disclose their family assets to the party.

But in Wubu, a struggling town of 80,000 banked by steep hills and
coal mines, citizens say that local officials answer to no one, and
that anyone who dares challenge them is punished.

When the central government talks about the economy and development,
it sounds so great, said Mr. Wang, the day laborer. But at the local
level, corrupt officials make all their money off of local people.

Student files are a proven moneymaker for corrupt state workers. Four
years ago, teachers in Jilin Province were caught selling two
students files for $2,500 and $3,600; the police suspected that they
intended to sell a dozen more. In May, the former head of a township
government in Hunan Province admitted that he had paid more than
$7,000 to steal the identity of a classmate of his daughter, so his
daughter could attend college using the classmates records.

While not quite as important as in Communist Chinas early days, when
it was a powerful tool of social control, the file, called a dangan,
is an absolute requirement for state employment and a means to bolster
a candidates chances for some private-sector jobs, labor experts say.
Because documents are collected over several years and signed by many
people, they are virtually impossible to replicate.

So in September 2007, when one Wubu graduate sought work at a local
bank and discovered that his file was gone, word spread fast. For the
next two years, his parents and a group of other parents in similar
straits said, they sought help at every level of the bureaucracy.

The governments answer, they said, was to reject any inquiry, place
the graduates parents under police surveillance and repeatedly detain
them. Last February, they said, five parents trying to petition the
national government were locked in an unofficial jail in Beijing for
nine days.

We are so exhausted, said one tearful mother, Song Heping. Our
nerves are about to snap from this torture. The officials who were
responsible not only have not been punished, they have been promoted.

Wubu officials did not respond to repeated inquiries. One Chinese
television journalist said they told him they had resolved the matter
simply by creating new folders. But families say the folders held
nothing but brief, error-riddled risumis that employers reflexively
reject as fake.

The parents are uniformly poor: one father drives a three-wheel taxi,
earning just 15 cents per passenger.

Mr. Xues parents sacrificed even more than most, in the belief that
education would lead their children out of poverty. They earn just
$450 a year growing dates, and live near a dirt mountain path,
drinking well water and cooking over a wood fire.

Mr Xue, the oldest child, wore secondhand clothes and skipped meals
throughout high school. When he won admission to a university in Xian,
400 miles away, his parents borrowed to cover the $1,500 in annual
expenses. Initially, it seemed the bet would pay off: he said he had
had a chance to work at an oil company with a monthly salary of $735.

But the job evaporated with his dangan. It was a catastrophe, he
said. Now he earns a base salary of $90 a month as a door-to-door
salesman and lives in a tiny, dingy room in a Xian slum.

The woman he hoped to marry left him because her parents said he would
never have a stable job. His mother suffered a nervous breakdown, and
the family debt ballooned. his father, Xue Ruzhan, said he owed more
than $10,000  more than twice what his property is worth.

What is the point of continuing to live? the father said. Sometimes
I want to commit suicide. These corrupt officials destroyed all our
hopes.
Including, it seems, the hopes of Longlongs younger sister, Xiaomei,
an 11th grader who once thought she would follow him to a university
degree.

No more. I want to quit, she said during a school lunch break. My
brother graduated from college. What good did it do him?
Zhang Jing contributed research from Wubu, China, and Yang Xiyun from
Beijing.